THE PRESS FEATURES One year old, but Mitterrand’s dream still to be realised

Press, 21 May 1982, Page 13

THE PRESS FEATURES One year old, but Mitterrand’s dream still to be realised

From

JON SWAIN,

“Sunday Times,” in Paris

At nine in the morning, a slate-grey Renault limousine, ■ equipped with telephone and escorted by an unmarked police car, halts outside an eighteenth-century house in the narrow Rue de Bievre, in the heart of the Latin Quarter in Paris. A short man, with dark, thinning hair and patrician features, emerges from the building. He smiles »briefly at the two policemen ■posted permanently outside as he climbs into the rear seat.

A few minutes later, amid a flurry of salutes by soldiers of the Republican Guard, the car is driven into the courtyard of the Elysee Palace, the official residence of the presidents of the French Republic. The car door is thrown open pnd out steps Francois Mitterrand for another day’s toil for France. The job, even his critics grudgingly concede after a year observing him at it, fits him like a glove.

Mitterrand seldom finishes before seven in the evening, when the same car drives him back to the cloistered privacy of his Left Bank home. Two doctors’ reports, published by his order, show him to be in excellent health for his 66 years, if a trifle overweight. A cancer scare turned out to be based on harmless lumbago. The President, aides say, displays in office all the rugged tenacity and drive which won him the job last year after 16 years of trying.

This month is the first anniversary of his great election triumph. Yet, in spite of the breathless pace of reform which he has been overseeing from the Elysee, it is becoming abundantly clear that public support for his government is flagging. The latest opinion polls show that the public is treating his whole programme of sweeping economic and social change with increasing scepticism — above all because inflation and unemployment, the two issues which count most in France, are continuing to rise inexorably. Strikes, inter-minister-

ial bickering and sagging popularity have, together, conspired to make the anniversary a dreary occasion. One problem is Mitterrand's bland image. The satirical weekly “Le Canard Enchaine” never. had any difficulty caricaturing previous incumbents of the Elysee — one of whom, Felix Faure, died in bed with his mistress. But it has singularly failed to get an armlock on Mitterrand. whom it has nicknamed Tonton (Uncle).

The president remains an intensely private person — as witness the contrast between the Elysee’s baroque splendour and the artistic chaos of the Rue de Bievre house where he lives with his wife Danielle — they have been married for 37 years — and their two sons. There is no doubt in which of the two houses he feels most at ease. Danielle, too, says she is “out of her element” amid the Elysee’s gilt. He bought their Left Bank home nine years ago, when his presidential ambitions seemed unrealisable to everyone but himself. It-is a measure of his strong attachment to it and of his need to have time for reflection, that he insists on living there and not at the “Chateau,” as the Elysee is known. Next to politics, Mitterrand's ruling passion is literature. He is the author of 10 books and has invited many literary figures, including Graham Greene, to Elysee lunch parties. At night, he often reads or writes in his attic library, liberally stocked with books by such favourite authors as Charles-Louis Montesquieu, the eighteenth-century French political philosopher. He also has a soft spot for the collected writings of Che Guevara, the Latin-American revolutionary whose friend,

Regis Debray, holds an important post' on the Elysee staff. Debray’s presence highlights’ an important shift in administrative practice. Mitterrand has finally broken the long tradition, nurtured by his predecessor, Giscard d'Estaing. that key civil service and Elysee posts were the monopoly of brilliant graduates of the elite Grandes Ecoles, in particular the Ecole Nationale d'Administration. Giscard’s own administration was stuffed with bloodless technocrats whereas Mitterrand's Elysee chief of staff, tipped by some as a future prime minister, is Pierre Beregovoy, a selfeducated factory worker. Another prominent member of the staff is Andre Rousselet, former boss of a Paris taxi company, with 'whom he plays a weekly round of golf. Because of his cabinet’s size — it has 43 ministers — its Wednesday morning meetings take place round a specially lengthened table. Although there is more real debate at these meetings than there was under Giscard, the President’s decision still prevails at the end of the day.

For all the rhetoric that the socialists would furnish France with a new economic and social order, the feeling prevails that little of importance has changed. To be sure, the minimum wage has gone up by 25 per cent and family allowances by nearly 50 per cent, but these increases have been largely eroded by a 14 per cent inflation rate, which continues to grow faster than in any other West European country. The expansionist economic measures taken by the Government have not only failed .to hold down unemployment, which Mitterrand vowed to

curb, but have also had a disastrous effect on the budget deficit — expected to exceed $25,000 million this year.

Several measures that should have been popular, such as reducing the working week and lowering the retirement age, have been bungled or badly explained to the public. Many workers complain that they are now worse off. Small items such as abolishing first-class travel during the rush hour on the Paris metro have caused resentment, and the Government’s botching of a reform of the broadcasting system led to accusations that it was as guilty as its predecessors of imposing political control on TV.

Of all the socialist measures now on the statute books, by far the most radical is the nationalisation programme, which puts more than 30 per cent of French industry and 85 per cent of credit under state control. It is too early to say if French industry will now operate in a less profit-based way, as many businessmen fear.

A series of draft bills on workers’ rights, just coming before Parliament, may have an even more radical impact on the way industry is run, for.they will introduce plans for greater worker participation in management. After one year of socialism, most Frenchmen agree that the revolution is still to come.

France today can be compared with a huge building site which has been levelled and on which the foundations of the great socialist edifice — nationalisation and decentralisation — have been laid. But the rest of the site remains a mess, amid growing concern that the project being undertaken is too costly and elaborate and may need modifying if the building is not to collapse. Next year, maybe, will start to show whether Mitterrand’s socialism is a tower crane or just a bulldozer.